I can't defend anarcho-capitalism

[Sam I am]

I'm not convinced in the slightest. Having difficulty showing people why illogical assumptions that they were born with are wrong does not mean accepting such assumptions.

If you can't articulate why their assumptions are "illogical", than how do you know that yours actually are logical

 

[Ronin Truth]

Anarcho-capitalism will probably manage to muddle through somehow, without your defense.

 

[emilynghiem]

OK, this is interesting because this is almost never the question people ask in my experience. I don't really have an answer for it. If people want the State badly enough, they will get it. Vigilance is required.

I don't see how this truly differs from minarchism in that regard, though. If enough people want big government, how can minarchy stop them from imposing it? Ultimately I don't see minarchy as a solution to the problem that you correctly point out exists.

I find if you localize your circle of influence, set up a business or a church on some LAND and operate from there to build your own PHYSICAL community,
then you can run your own operations with maximum autonomy and minimal interference from external government.

A. I've seen this done successfully by a CHURCH group buying out property and making it taxfree, where they operate their own schools and meeting facilities,
so it can still be used to create jobs for people and provide services through programs managed on site.

I would like to expand on this, and include facilities for TRAINING people to manage housing and businesses, such as health care, as part of educational outreach so it is still under the organization's programming. This way, housing, business, health care and other services could still be provided onsite if the school is licensed to train people to work in these fields.

You can have your own minigovt under one program, including a system of electing or appointing management reps and mediating conflicts or changes in policies.

B. You can also set up a charter school as an LLC business or not for profit business, buy up land, build a sustainable community of student houses and jobs around the campus, and manage all programs and policies yourself within legal bounds (not like a cult that is trying to skirt any laws and get busted for abuses or violations), and write off losses and costs off taxes as other businesses do.

Not sure which is the better route to go: church or business. With a church/religious organization there are still rules about reporting to make sure you maintain tax exemption. With businesses there is more freedom to write off expenses from taxes, but there are still property taxes to deal with. Corporations like Exxon that built Kingwood and Rice University in Houston have basically developed their own subdivisions for their community members.

I see this as the way of the future, to democratize the governance of each city within local communities built around a campus with democratically elected resident management, an educational system of training people on a sustainable rotating basis, and housing/health care and other services provided by workers as part of the management training programs and educational coursework or work-study credits toward paying educational costs.

Where the funding can come from to jumpstart this local campus system of organizing and training self-governance
is restitution from crime, abuses and corruption already owed to taxpayers per district, city, state or case.

by taking each case of crime that costs taxpayers a fixed amount of money,
each locale can demand restitution in the form of credit against that debt. And either issues notes similar to Federal Reserve currency representing a fixed debt,
or issue credit through a card system or database, and use that "reimbursement" fund to finance reform and renovation of local facilities into a campus system
for converting government to localized programs operated on a sustainable basis. When set up correctly, the jobs and programs should support themselves, and not keep relying on more grants or handouts to fund welfare and jobs providing welfare which is not sustainable. The jobs should be in getting people off welfare, out of the cycle of poverty, crime, abuse or drugs, and help people who owe restitution to pay back their costs to society so that money is used to rebuild cities instead.

As crime and disease are reduced, as well as the cost of both, then more resources are saved to invest in a sustainable economy.

Any community that wants to take back responsibility for converting government waste and losses into sustainable campus development for solving these problems
can organize resources and set up their own self-managed programs.

You can set that up as a church or a business, nonprofit school, Constitutional monarchy, kind dictatorship, anarchist syndicates or capitalism, communist or socialist worker union, etc. and it would still operate by the consent of the participants under whatever name they want to assign or affiliate with. It's still the same concept.

If you incorporate as an independent subdivision or township, it could become a self-governing city-state and be basically the same thing.

I think city and state government should be working toward TRAINING people to set up and manage their own local city-states
instead of annexing land for their taxbase and trying to control more people and resources from the top down. We'd get rid of crime
and have more direct accountability by localizing responsibility and control and training more citizens to be self-governing and self-policing in exchange
for greater liberties and direct say in government by funding and managing it themselves.

 

[boneyard bill]

It's not a dichotomy; it's all part of the same idea. The Church was a centralized power, yes, but it was a counter-balancing one. It was a very powerful political institution with interests not always in harmony with those of the lords and princes. Thus, they counter-balanced each other to an extent, and limited each other to an extent (mostly in the direction of the Church limiting the princes). This is what we might call real checks and balances, as opposed to weak and mostly phony ones such as in the US federal government. Paychecks all signed by the same guy = not real check and balance on each other.

Why are you asking that? I am confused. Obviously: with your own army! How much more simple could it be? I think you are still stuck imagining something very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very different than me when you think of "Private Property Society". In a private property society, you defend yourself with tanks and assassins and rifles and trenches full of gasoline and trained alligators outfitted with lasers. In other words: the normal way.

The only difference -- the only difference -- is that there is free entry into all market fields. That includes arbitration and other dispute resolution services, and defense and security services.

Fine. But how do you maintain an army without taxes? If it is to be a citizen-type militia, then it cannot possess the full accoutrements of an army. It members cannot be professionals. They have to work for a living. They can only train part-time. Members can come and go as they please (or need since they're not paid and need to go home at harvest time). Washington saw all these things going on with the Boston militia and reported back to Congress that they were going to need an army. They couldn't fight the British with only militia.

But my understanding of anarcho-capitalism is that taxation is theft.

What the founding fathers created WAS, as far as I can see, very much a balance of power between state and federal governments and a separation of powers within the federal government itself. That system has been corrupted by deviations from the original script. Most of these deviations are not necessarily direct infringements on the constitution or even the product of a wildly liberal interpretation, although some of them are, but most are a matter of practice derived from war or emergency.

The income tax is constitutional, but it was the huge increase brought about by WW I, and the subsequent restoration of high rates during the depression and its subsequent extension to wages in World War II that allowed the federal government to fund all kinds of programs that it more or less forced upon the states, not through compulsion, but through the incentives of matching funds and similar grants. Likewise it has used its power to regulate interstate commerce in ways that weren't anticipated by the founders but don't necessarily involve any egregious interpretation of that clause.

 

[boneyard bill]

Paying for an image is not "hiring a hit man". Should it be illegal to create and sell images that are identical to snuff porn but without a murder taking place?

No. But the fact remains that if I purchase snuff porn I am paying someone for having killed someone else, and yet, by your own admission, that does not violate the non-aggression principle.

So what about "fight to the death" He-man contests? Should they be allowed too? They would violate the non-aggression principle and yet the participants are acting voluntarily. As I have said, the NAG is not adequate to cover the full range of human relationships.

 

[otherone]

No. But the fact remains that if I purchase snuff porn I am paying someone for having killed someone else, and yet, by your own admission, that does not violate the non-aggression principle.

So what about "fight to the death" He-man contests? Should they be allowed too? They would violate the non-aggression principle and yet the participants are acting voluntarily. As I have said, the NAG is not adequate to cover the full range of human relationships.

Paying for an image is not paying someone to kill someone else.
In regards to your "He-man" question:
from wiki:
The non-aggression principle (NAP)—also called the non-aggression axiom, the zero aggression principle (ZAP), the anti-coercion principle, or the non-initiation of force—is a moral stance which asserts that aggression is inherently illegitimate. NAP and property rights are closely linked, since what aggression is depends on what a person's rights are.[1] Aggression, for the purposes of NAP, is defined as the initiation or threatening of violence against a person or legitimately owned property of another. Specifically, any unsolicited actions of others that physically affect an individual’s property or person, no matter if the result of those actions is damaging, beneficial, or neutral to the owner, are considered violent or aggressive when they are against the owner's free will and interfere with his right to self-determination and the principle of self-ownership.

 

[boneyard bill]

Paying for an image is not paying someone to kill someone else.
In regards to your "He-man" question:
from wiki:
The non-aggression principle (NAP)—also called the non-aggression axiom, the zero aggression principle (ZAP), the anti-coercion principle, or the non-initiation of force—is a moral stance which asserts that aggression is inherently illegitimate. NAP and property rights are closely linked, since what aggression is depends on what a person's rights are.[1] Aggression, for the purposes of NAP, is defined as the initiation or threatening of violence against a person or legitimately owned property of another. Specifically, any unsolicited actions of others that physically affect an individual’s property or person, no matter if the result of those actions is damaging, beneficial, or neutral to the owner, are considered violent or aggressive when they are against the owner's free will and interfere with his right to self-determination and the principle of self-ownership.

You're missing the point. I didn't say were literally the same thing. Nonetheless, they are effectively the same thing. My point all along has been that the non-aggression principle isn't adequate for dealing with all human interactions. Effectively, is little difference between paying a hit man and purchasing snuff pornography. in each case, the murder is performed for profit to the murderer. Yet the supporter of NAG is forced to concede that it is OK to pay a murderer to kill provided that it is the product, rather than the service, that is sold.

Likewise it is must be conceded that it is OK kill someone for profit if that person agrees to take the risks involved.

 

[otherone]

You're missing the point. I didn't say were literally the same thing. Nonetheless, they are effectively the same thing. My point all along has been that the non-aggression principle isn't adequate for dealing with all human interactions. Effectively, is little difference between paying a hit man and purchasing snuff pornography. in each case, the murder is performed for profit to the murderer. Yet the supporter of NAG is forced to concede that it is OK to pay a murderer to kill provided that it is the product, rather than the service, that is sold.

Likewise it is must be conceded that it is OK kill someone for profit if that person agrees to take the risks involved.

Thank you for the clarification. I understand your point now; you arrive at these dilemmas with the idea that they are "bad" things, and label them "crimes" so a state may apply coercion to prevent or punish. While there may be a case for the immorality of these actions, in no way are they crimes.

 

[helmuth_hubener]

Fine. But how do you maintain an army without taxes?

How do you maintain a complex retail goods distribution system without taxes?

How do you maintain a multi-billion-dollar deep sea oil drilling operation without taxes?

Answer to all three questions:

Well, I'll leave it up to you. How would you build a globe-spanning network of stores, trucks, warehouses, and suppliers without any taxes? Could it even be done? I think it could be, but what do you think?

 

[boneyard bill]

Thank you for the clarification. I understand your point now; you arrive at these dilemmas with the idea that they are "bad" things, and label them "crimes" so a state may apply coercion to prevent or punish. While there may be a case for the immorality of these actions, in no way are they crimes.

Can I infer from your statement above that it is not a crime to hire a hitman? If paying someone to commit murder is not a crime with respect to snuff pornography, why should it be a crime under other circumstances?

 

[otherone]

Can I infer from your statement above that it is not a crime to hire a hitman? If paying someone to commit murder is not a crime with respect to snuff pornography, why should it be a crime under other circumstances?

Paying someone to commit a murder is murder. Paying someone for a videotape or image is not.
As an example; Let's say I find an old snuff video in an attic of a home I purchase. I subsequently give it to a friend, who sells it to his brother for 10 bucks.
Has my friend's brother, effectively, committed murder?

 

[boneyard bill]

How do you maintain a complex retail goods distribution system without taxes?

How do you maintain a multi-billion-dollar deep sea oil drilling operation without taxes?

Answer to all three questions:

Well, I'll leave it up to you. How would you build a globe-spanning network of stores, trucks, warehouses, and suppliers without any taxes? Could it even be done? I think it could be, but what do you think?

I only saw two questions, but we'll overlook that. Of course you can because people voluntarily put forward the money because they want the services provided. This is what the peasants did in Europe after the breakdown of the Roman Empire. They needed protection from bandits and thieves so they hired security guards to protect them and offered these security guards 25% of their crops. Those security guards became known as knights, and the peasants became known as serfs. For the peasants the problem with this relationship is that lacked any intermediate institutions that could restrain the knights. (Although, as you have pointed out, the Church was able to act in some, limited circumstances).

The problem is that the situation began as a contract relationship, a common characteristic of individualistic behavior, but it soon became a status relationship because the knights simply possessed the power. It was relationship of mutual dependency, but it was not contractual in fact, even though it had begun that way in form. The knights depended on the serfs for their 25%, and the serfs depended on the knights for their protection. But the knights had far move effective power over the serfs than the other way around.

You need intermediary institutions to restrain the troops. You need some people, for example, who are authorized to control the weapons and probably another set of people who actually possess the keys to the armory, and you need to specify the conditions when the armory can be properly accessed, and others who are authorized purchase ammunition, etc. All this has to be paid for, and if you pass the hat, and you don't get enough money, the whole system breaks down.

But, to put in more philosophical terms, if I am part of a mutual defense group, I am obligated to participate in the defense of the group. That is the nature of mutual dependency. It creates obligations as well as rights. But it does more than that. It also transforms the member. I haven't merely contracted for mutual defense. I have been transformed into a soldier (at least a part-time one). But such mutual defense groups are always that efficient. As I pointed out previously, such members have to support themselves. That can't be available all of the time, and they can't train with the rigor of a professional army. So, historically, you find the emergence of professional standing army, and the ordinary individual fulfills his obligation, not by fighting, but by paying taxes.

As I've stated earlier, this, I believe, is the origin of the state. When the common citizen no longer fulfills his obligations to the mutually dependent group in kind, and the political function becomes professionalized, you have the emergence of the state. Although, of course, as we see in the case of feudalism, the professionalization of the political function does not necessarily lead to the creation of a state. There are other alternatives.

But the bottom line is that the anarcho-libertarian incorrectly assumes that the fundamental human nature is that of the autonomous individual, and particularly the autonomy of the individual will. But this assumption is nowhere justified. We are, to the depths of our being, mutually dependent. Even our psychology is mutually dependent because we think in a language and that language is a gift of others from whom we have learned it. But mutual dependency implies obligation! So we cannot overlook that when we consider not only what is practical, but what is ethical as well. But if we are obligated, then the individual will cannot be autonomous.

What we must not overlook, however, is that the purpose of a mutually dependent group is the protection and advancement of its individual members. A mutually dependent society is not a football team which has a goal beyond itself i.e. to win the championship. That is where the state goes astray (in an ethical sense at least). It is easy for those comprising the state, and even much of its citizenry, to conclude that the state exists for something beyond itself in terms of the glorification of the state through conquest or through monument building or, since Rousseau, through the transformation of human nature itself.

I kind of over-answered your question by getting into all the philosophical stuff, but I think it gives you a better idea of where I'm coming from. It isn't JUST the practical difficulties that lead me to reject the anarchist model. It is my objection to the concept of individual autonomy that pervades not only modern libertarianism, but modern liberalism as well. Human behavior throughout history does not conform to that model. It does conform to a model based on mutual dependency.

 

[boneyard bill]

Paying someone to commit a murder is murder. Paying someone for a videotape or image is not.
As an example; Let's say I find an old snuff video in an attic of a home I purchase. I subsequently give it to a friend, who sells it to his brother for 10 bucks.
Has my friend's brother, effectively, committed murder?

No, he hasn't because he hasn't paid the murderer. But if I pay the murderer, even if indirectly through an intermediary, I am complicit in the murder. The point is that there are many ways in which we can harm people without actually "aggressing" against them. "Non-aggression," and "do no harm" are not identical statements.

 

[helmuth_hubener]

...

 

[helmuth_hubener]

I only saw two questions, but we'll overlook that.

Your question is the third, of course. 1. How can one set up an army (without taxes)? 2. How can one set up a mammoth retail distribution and sales empire (without taxes)? 3. How can one build and operate a preposerously enormous conglomeration of machinery and engineering -- build it for billions, and operate it for years at a loss, a loss of millions of dollars per day (without taxes)?

If a man could answer any one of these three questions, could solve any one of these very difficult, very challenging problems, then he could probably at least see the possibility that the other two might be soluble as well, if enough men who were smart enough and motivated enough were to try to tackle the problem. It would be anything but inevitable -- it would be a tremendous accomplishment, to be applauded for sure! -- but it just might be possible, at least in theory, to build a deep-sea oil drilling operation. Or to establish a sophisticated retail network. Or to maintain a defensive army.

You see my point, I trust.

I did read your whole post, of course, with great interest, but I am going to boil it down to what I see as the fundamental point you would like to make, and also a fundamental misunderstanding we may be experiencing. Here it is:

But the bottom line is that the anarcho-libertarian incorrectly assumes that the fundamental human nature is that of the autonomous individual, and particularly the autonomy of the individual will.

But nowhere do I see that point being made! Am I making that point? There may be libertarians who feel that way, but guess what? There are also conservatives and right-wingers who feel this way! There are people who 100% agree with you politically who feel that way. Does that prove your political philosophy wrong?

Yes, the concept of individual autonomy pervades modern American conservatism as well as liberalism as well as libertarianism. Individualism is part of American culture -- that's just a fact of life. And, inevitably, some take it too far. But believing in some sort of "super autonomous individual," is not a part of private property society (aka anarcho-capitalist) philosophy. Note: not only is it not an important part, and not a fundamental part (which is what you seem to believe it to be) -- it is not a part at all! The private property philosophy does not assume that "the fundamental human nature is that of the autonomous individual". It doesn't. Advocates of the voluntary private property society do not necessarily assume that. Some may, just as some may be overweight, or play too many video games. But that is not the philosophy's fault. People are affected by the culture they live in. Surely you, of all people, can understand and agree with that. It should be no surprise that a philosophy with its orgin and stronghold in one of the most individual-glorifying cultures on Earth would have some adherents who may be extreme in their individual-glorifying.

But this assumption is nowhere justified.

But this assumption is nowhere made. It is not an assumption that is important or relevant at all to the political philosophy to which I adhere.

We are, to the depths of our being, mutually dependent.

Indeed, it is hard to see how we could last very long if all infants and their parents were to decide to operate as "rugged individualists".

So, like I say, I believe that you have misunderstood us. Or at least me. Which is certainly no sin. But I hope that maybe you are beginning to understand a little better from are little conversation.

I will reply to just one more sentence of yours for now:

You need intermediary institutions to restrain the troops.

But then, how are the intermediary institutions restrained? If they have more power than the "knights" or whoever the bad guys are, then they are the ones with the most power. And if there's one institution (intermediary or not) with overwhelmingly superior power, guess what will happen over time? They will use and consolidate their power! Surprise, surprise, surprise! Even if there's somehow multiple "intermediary institutions", each weak alone but strong enough if they all cooperate to limit the bad guys, chances are that the extent of their cooperation will increase over time until they are for all practical purposes one institution.

There really is no utopic solution to the power problem. Having big muscles lets you protect the tribe from the wooly mammoths, but it also lets you beat up the rest of the tribe more easily. That's just the way it is. Some people seek power over each other. That's a very real, very deep motivation for them.

So how do we keep them from bossing and bullying?

We can't.

They will do so. The competent ones, anyway. Some would-be bullies will be too stupid to ever gain any real power. But others will be smart. They will be valuable. They will have real skills and leadership ability. They will have people under them whom they bully. Period. End of story.

But what has proven to be very effective and nice in limiting the damage caused by this abusive behavior is the "meta-institution", if you will, of competition and decentralization. Are there megalomaniac manufacturing company owners, who bully and harangue and abuse their workers all day every day? Yep. But there are multiple manufacturing companies that the machinist who tires of the abuse can go work for. This makes everyone fairly happy, and makes everything work out fairly OK, and nothing gets too out of hand. If the peasants could have chosen whichever knight rental service they wanted, then it would have been much more difficult for the contractual relationship to turn into a non-contractual one. Not impossible, but less likely and less easy. If would have been a much more robust system, resistant to undermining. When was the last time a grocery chain owner went rogue and started charging taxes and mass-murdering millions? Free and open competition is the key "meta-institution" which has proven wildly successful in preventing the darker lusts for power in the human race from running out of control, and taking over the world, so to speak.

So that is what we, as advocates of the free and voluntary private property society, seek to acheive. We are not trying to overturn society. We are not like the French Revolution. We want to strengthen society. We want to make it more robust. We want to enable all the good, worthwhile, free, and voluntary systems of mutual dependency -- commerce, religion, family, science, art -- to be able to be strong and flourish and hold their own against those who would detroy them: those who seek for hegemony.

 

[boneyard bill]

Helmuth Hubener writes:

But nowhere do I see that point being made! Am I making that point? There may be libertarians who feel that way, but guess what? There are also conservatives and right-wingers who feel this way! There are people who 100% agree with you politically who feel that way. Does that prove your political philosophy wrong? Yes, the concept of individual autonomy pervades modern American conservatism as well as liberalism as well as libertarianism.

I would argue that the assumption of individual autonomy pervades all of Western culture. Not just the US. But the source of my claim with respect to anarcho-capitalism rests in Murray Rothbard's book The Ethics of Liberty. But note, that I am claiming it as a presupposition. I am not claiming that Rothbard or other anarcho-capitalists overt make that point. The only philosopher I know of who openly asserted the value of individual autonomy was Neitzsche.

If you want to claim that an anarcho-capitalist society would be a nicer place to live than the present one that is fine. You can go ahead and try it, and if it doesn't work you will suffer the consequences. But most anarcho-capitalists go on to assert such things as "taxes are theft" "the state is evil," and other claims that go beyond the practical and into moral proclamations and moral arguments. Moral arguments need to be defended on moral grounds. That means they must start at the philosophical level.

The OP said he could not defend anarcho-capitalism and asked for input both pro and con. If you are simply going to argue the anarcho-capitalist claim on utilitarian grounds, you face the same problem that all utilitarians face which is defining the good that utilitarianism is aiming to achieve. In other words, first, what is the good? Is peace better than war, for example? But I will not dwell on that. I would only ask that you concede then that taxes are not theft. That military conscription is not immoral. That citizens can be compelled to serve on juries. That the citizens of your anarchist and mutually dependent society do face obligations to the community even though you believe that those obligations can be dispensed with and your society will remain functional.

Let me emphasize two points I have previously made. First of all, that mutual dependency implies obligations, and secondly, that those obligations transform the individual in significant ways. That is to say, those obligations represent a status relationship. When I speak of mutual dependency, I am not talking about market activities which are contract relationships. In other words, if I have an obligation to defend the community if it is under attack, I am transformed into a soldier. The mere potential for such a transformation is a status relationship, not a contractual one. I am not a mercenary who is a soldier to begin with and by choice and is operating under a contractual relationship.

Indeed, it is hard to see how we could last very long if all infants and their parents were to decide to operate as "rugged individualists".

Rothbard states, specifically that parents are not under any obligation (or at least cannot be brought under any legal obligation) to feed their children and have every right to let them starve.

But then, how are the intermediary institutions restrained? If they have more power than the "knights" or whoever the bad guys are, then they are the ones with the most power. And if there's one institution (intermediary or not) with overwhelmingly superior power, guess what will happen over time? They will use and consolidate their power! Surprise, surprise, surprise! Even if there's somehow multiple "intermediary institutions", each weak alone but strong enough if they all cooperate to limit the bad guys, chances are that the extent of their cooperation will increase over time until they are for all practical purposes one institution.

I think I gave a few examples of how you need someone controlling the keys to the armory, and others who must authorize that person etc. But the details depend on the situation. The state is part of a mutually dependent society. The people may depend on the troops for protection, but troops depend on the people for food, weaponry, and maintenance. We can see this play out in common Biblical stories. When David fought Goliath, he was too young to serve in the Hebrew militia. He showed up at the camp to bring food to his older brothers. The militia so ad hoc and lacking structure or organization that it couldn't even feed its own troops. But later, the people demand a king. The prophet Samuel is totally against it arguing that a king will enslave them. But they insist and Samuel agrees to anoint Saul. But a king needs a standing army which has to be paid, an armorer, a quartermaster, etc. And that means you need a tax collector. This is where the political function becomes professionalized and this is how the state is born. But you need this if you're going to fight an enemy who is similarly organized. Saul is killed in battle, and David succeeds him and by the time David's son, Solomon takes over, the king is also the judge and no one doubts that if Solomon says the baby shall be split, then he will be split.

So it is in the professionalization of the political function that great care should be taken to assure that the various necessities of this process remain strictly segregated because it is the very nature of the state that it tends to become a mutually dependent group in its own right. When the troops depend on the tax collector and the tax collector depends upon the troops, the process has gone too far. That is the kind of situation that needs to be prevented. Of course, throughout history it rarely has been. But that doesn't mean we can learn from the mistakes of the past as well as the few successes.

If the peasants could have chosen whichever knight rental service they wanted, then it would have been much more difficult for the contractual relationship to turn into a non-contractual one. Not impossible, but less likely and less easy.

But what you're calling for here is simply a war between knights. The British and French fought a Hundred Years War over this question. Who was rightful king of France? How much power should the English king have, as Duke of Acquitane, over the province of Acquitane? How much power should the Duke of Burgundy have, and whose side would he be on? The serfs didn't need to initiate this competition. The knights were quite capable of that themselves. In fact, the peasants, under Joan of Arc, had a good deal to do with settling the issue.

I'm all for decentralization. I think it's a very important part of the institutional structure for a free society, but with voluntarism you have no power to decentralize.

 

[helmuth_hubener]

I would argue that the assumption of individual autonomy pervades all of Western culture. Not just the US.

OK, then it was probably unfair of you to condemn an entire philosophy, libertarianism, on the grounds that some of its believers may also believe too strongly in individuality, don't you think? Are we agreed?

But the source of my claim with respect to anarcho-capitalism rests in Murray Rothbard's book The Ethics of Liberty.

So, you have read this book, then?

 

[Madison320]

The problem is, the average person cannot possibly comprehend how competing police forces and courts are able to work. And frankly, even I don't know how they would work. Based on economic laws, I do believe they would work, but HOW I really don't know.

They DON'T work based on economic laws. Economic laws only work in the absence of coercion. That's why it's called a FREE market. You can't shop around for governments, they tend to make you an offer you can't refuse.

 

[majinkoola]

IMO Bob Murphy is the smartest guy in the RP movement. This video does a pretty good job of talking about the an-cap argument for police, military, and judges.



As he talks about, explaining private security is easy. Police is really easy, military is a little harder but the arguments can be made (and are made in the video). I have convinced 7 people or so, including liberals and conservatives, of having private police. I've also convinced non-libertarians of privatizing roads. But having private judges is a really hard sell.

 

[Occam's Banana]

They DON'T work based on economic laws. Economic laws only work in the absence of coercion. That's why it's called a FREE market. You can't shop around for governments, they tend to make you an offer you can't refuse.

If governments, as you use the term here, are based on the application of coercion ("they ... make you an offer you can't refuse"), and if "economic laws only work in the absence of coercion," then - by your own "logic" - free markets cannot coexist with governments.